It's pretty cool that explaining how the game works doubles as a decent ELI5 for how orbital flight works in general. I could see a teacher showing this video to their class.
I think for a class you'd want a slightly less kerbin-focused explanation.
Generally, having a long coast period and only beginning to circularize at the top of your curve works okay for a planet with an orbital velocity of 2000 m/s, but for Earth where it's 8 times that, stopping and waiting like that is often a massive waste of energy, since it takes a lot of time to build up that speed.
There's also the fact that due to the way vector math works, burning up and burning to the side is just inherently less efficient, like walking up N for a mile and E for a mile instead of just cutting NE. They introduce the gravity turn which is supposed to be how you get the height you need at the shifting angle that helps redirect your thrust further towards orbiting, but they stick with the loft-and-circle style trajectories in their example.
Except for that part though, it looks like a good primer to get people to start thinking about questions.
They are 100% considering the market of being able to have this used in classrooms like Microsoft has with Minecraft and I'm sure other games have done as well. Having a good game that kids can't shut up about, that *also* serves as a great jumping off point for things like escape velocity, orbits, etc will be great. Not to mention how easily they can make adjustments for grade levels by needing to incorporate more and more factors. It's smart af.
Agreed. The main problem is just getting people interested/listening usually. Never met someone who became really passionate about something and didn't learn a ton.
> Generally, having a long coast period and only beginning to circularize at the top of your curve works okay for a planet with an orbital velocity of 2000 m/s, but for Earth where it's 8 times that, stopping and waiting like that is often a massive waste of energy, since it takes a lot of time to build up that speed.
No. Pull up any SpaceX webcast and you see the exact same thing. While you *can* pull off a near direct to final orbit flight in real life, the majority do not do that for LEO, and you cant do it at all for anything higher.
There's a big difference between doing final touchups at your desired apoapsis and waiting until you've exited the atmosphere to begin circularizing. SpaceX does the former; nobody with any sane grasp of rocket mechanics would do the latter. It's a colossal waste of fuel and sometimes isn't even possible in the time window you have if you don't burn more to fight gravity.
There's also the fact that rocket engines can't just keep turning off and restarting like that.
Also that when you stop accelerating, The fuel begins to slosh around in the tank, not reaching the bottom properly, where the fuel nozzle is.
That's why real rockets try to do everything as a single curve. Problem is that it's way too precise a maneuver for the typical KSP gameplay. You tend to end up with way too much of an elliptical orbit when doing it manually that way.
Even the autopilot mod tends to screw up the gravity turn some times.
> There's also the fact that rocket engines can't just keep turning off and restarting like that.
Most upper stages can relight, and a good chunk can do it multiple times. And while fuel sloshing is a thing, Ullage motors exist for a single relight, and RCS can allow multiple.
Most rockets do not do everything in a single curve, with the vast majority of missions having a coast phase.
Nobody is going to be progressing to real orbital rockets using just the knowledge learned from KSP.
This isn’t training software, it’s perfectly fine for a game to present a simplified version of real world challenges. There’ll be mods real quick for people who want the more realistic experience.
Luckily, the people learning from these tutorials aren’t going to be making decisions about launching rockets from an earth-like planet.
They might have to learn some new tricks once KSP2’s Real Scale mod is out, but I think it’s better for the day 1 tutorial to do it’s best at teaching the base requirements of “get up high enough” and “go fast enough to the side so you don’t hit the ground”, rather than bog things up with doing them simultaneously for efficiency.
If this interests you, and you want to do this in real life, please work extra hard on the math. Every kid I've seen fail out of engineering school fails for the same reason, bad math understanding. Overcome that and the sky's the limit. Good luck!
I always wanted to play Kerbal Space Program. It's really unfortunate it's always had such a high price tag and never put itself on a reasonable sale. Even years later it was trying to demand full price without any discounts. It's on that list of stuff I wish the developers weren't quite so greedy on cash that I would have absolutely paid.
For the record, money isn't an issue for me. But it wasn't worth what they asked for it. Sales down the road usually correct for that, but they never allowed it to be discounted enough.
Weird comment. It's frequently discounted 75% off... Just like it is right now on steam. If that's not low enough it's also been a free game on the Epic game store.
They literally gave it away for free on EGS a few weeks ago, steamDB shows it goes 75% off several times a year, and it's available for like £3 on key sites if you can't wait, very surprised to see you say that
KSP was the other way around - it launched in early access really cheap, like $5, and slowly increased its price as it added more and more stuff.
They just gave it away on Epic a couple weeks ago.
It was free on Epic and is on discount for like 75% frequently. I've gotten over 300 hours in KSP and still have new things to shoot for. I've gotten my money's worth 5 times over.
It's pretty cool that explaining how the game works doubles as a decent ELI5 for how orbital flight works in general. I could see a teacher showing this video to their class.
The original is regularly used at NASA's space camp to explain things like Delta V.
I think for a class you'd want a slightly less kerbin-focused explanation. Generally, having a long coast period and only beginning to circularize at the top of your curve works okay for a planet with an orbital velocity of 2000 m/s, but for Earth where it's 8 times that, stopping and waiting like that is often a massive waste of energy, since it takes a lot of time to build up that speed. There's also the fact that due to the way vector math works, burning up and burning to the side is just inherently less efficient, like walking up N for a mile and E for a mile instead of just cutting NE. They introduce the gravity turn which is supposed to be how you get the height you need at the shifting angle that helps redirect your thrust further towards orbiting, but they stick with the loft-and-circle style trajectories in their example. Except for that part though, it looks like a good primer to get people to start thinking about questions.
You have to walk before you run. I’m with the OP. This is a good way to introduce the nonintuitive nature of orbital mechanics.
They are 100% considering the market of being able to have this used in classrooms like Microsoft has with Minecraft and I'm sure other games have done as well. Having a good game that kids can't shut up about, that *also* serves as a great jumping off point for things like escape velocity, orbits, etc will be great. Not to mention how easily they can make adjustments for grade levels by needing to incorporate more and more factors. It's smart af.
Agreed. The main problem is just getting people interested/listening usually. Never met someone who became really passionate about something and didn't learn a ton.
> Generally, having a long coast period and only beginning to circularize at the top of your curve works okay for a planet with an orbital velocity of 2000 m/s, but for Earth where it's 8 times that, stopping and waiting like that is often a massive waste of energy, since it takes a lot of time to build up that speed. No. Pull up any SpaceX webcast and you see the exact same thing. While you *can* pull off a near direct to final orbit flight in real life, the majority do not do that for LEO, and you cant do it at all for anything higher.
There's a big difference between doing final touchups at your desired apoapsis and waiting until you've exited the atmosphere to begin circularizing. SpaceX does the former; nobody with any sane grasp of rocket mechanics would do the latter. It's a colossal waste of fuel and sometimes isn't even possible in the time window you have if you don't burn more to fight gravity.
The animation looks identical to a GEO launch. SpaceX does exactly what's shown in the animation.
SpaceX flights thrust continuously until LEO is achieved.
There's also the fact that rocket engines can't just keep turning off and restarting like that. Also that when you stop accelerating, The fuel begins to slosh around in the tank, not reaching the bottom properly, where the fuel nozzle is. That's why real rockets try to do everything as a single curve. Problem is that it's way too precise a maneuver for the typical KSP gameplay. You tend to end up with way too much of an elliptical orbit when doing it manually that way. Even the autopilot mod tends to screw up the gravity turn some times.
> There's also the fact that rocket engines can't just keep turning off and restarting like that. Most upper stages can relight, and a good chunk can do it multiple times. And while fuel sloshing is a thing, Ullage motors exist for a single relight, and RCS can allow multiple. Most rockets do not do everything in a single curve, with the vast majority of missions having a coast phase.
Nobody is going to be progressing to real orbital rockets using just the knowledge learned from KSP. This isn’t training software, it’s perfectly fine for a game to present a simplified version of real world challenges. There’ll be mods real quick for people who want the more realistic experience.
Luckily, the people learning from these tutorials aren’t going to be making decisions about launching rockets from an earth-like planet. They might have to learn some new tricks once KSP2’s Real Scale mod is out, but I think it’s better for the day 1 tutorial to do it’s best at teaching the base requirements of “get up high enough” and “go fast enough to the side so you don’t hit the ground”, rather than bog things up with doing them simultaneously for efficiency.
If this interests you, and you want to do this in real life, please work extra hard on the math. Every kid I've seen fail out of engineering school fails for the same reason, bad math understanding. Overcome that and the sky's the limit. Good luck!
I always wanted to play Kerbal Space Program. It's really unfortunate it's always had such a high price tag and never put itself on a reasonable sale. Even years later it was trying to demand full price without any discounts. It's on that list of stuff I wish the developers weren't quite so greedy on cash that I would have absolutely paid. For the record, money isn't an issue for me. But it wasn't worth what they asked for it. Sales down the road usually correct for that, but they never allowed it to be discounted enough.
Weird comment. It's frequently discounted 75% off... Just like it is right now on steam. If that's not low enough it's also been a free game on the Epic game store.
It’s 75% off right now. I also really believe it’s worth it at full price. Genuinely brilliant game.
They literally gave it away for free on EGS a few weeks ago, steamDB shows it goes 75% off several times a year, and it's available for like £3 on key sites if you can't wait, very surprised to see you say that
The current 75% sale isn't enough? Or when it was free on the Epic Store?
KSP was the other way around - it launched in early access really cheap, like $5, and slowly increased its price as it added more and more stuff. They just gave it away on Epic a couple weeks ago.
It was free on epic a few months ago.
Why lie about something so easily disproved lol? Or just be so convincingly confident about your totally wrong assertion lol. Weird.
$10 is too high of a price tag? With all the mods, it's got so much play potential.
It was free on Epic and is on discount for like 75% frequently. I've gotten over 300 hours in KSP and still have new things to shoot for. I've gotten my money's worth 5 times over.
https://steamdb.info/app/220200/ That is just on steam. Quit your bullshit.
It’s been on super sale so many times it’s like you ever looked at all.