Geeb Space Program

[Dosipede]

Welcome to Geeb Space Program, a story of exploration told through the independent game Kerbal Space Program. Kerbal Space Program lets you take control of little green men in a quest to explore a fictional star system using realistic(-ish) physics. I knew nothing about orbital mechanics when I began playing this game about a year ago. Now I watch sci-fi movies and scoff while saying "Why are you burning toward the planet you are orbiting?"

Anyway, this first post will serve as something of an introduction with our first mission. I'm playing with a long list of mods, which I'll detail in the following blog post, since a blog can be edited as I go along:
Episode list, mod list and glossary of commonly-used terms

Let's explore the game a little bit. The game starts at Kerbal Space Center (KSC). This is where all the decisions are made, where rockets and planes are built and where rockets and planes launch from.



In the game, you control Kerbals, which are little green men that stand about a meter tall, with heads that make up roughly 60 percent of their body mass. You start with three on your astronaut roster: Jebediah Kerman (pictured here), Bob Kerman and Bill Kerman, and you can hire more. Jeb has a reputation among KSP players for smiling through every disaster. All Kerbals have the last name Kerman, indicating a fair amount of inbreeding, which might be why they all have huge noggins and bug eyes.



Kerbals reside on the planet Kerbin, which has an equatorial radius of only 600 kilometers (compared to Earth's 6,300 or so), but has the same gravitational pull as Earth, indicating a very dense core. Kerbal Space Center lies on the east coast of a peninsula directly on the equator. Kerbin has no axial tilt, meaning no seasons. It's perpetually spring here.



(Note: there are mods which alter the game to have you playing on a real-sized Earth, complete with launching from Cape Canaveral or other stations, and real-sized solar system planets. We are not using those mods. They make It incredibly difficult and time-consuming. Rocket science is hard. Who knew?)

Kerbin's atmosphere ends at 70 kilometers, and not the way Earth's atmosphere ends (it fades away until it gets to a point where scientists go "OK, we're in space now", but there's still a tiny amount of atmosphere, which is why the International Space Station has to fire station-keeping rockets every few years to make sure it stays in its desired orbit). Nope, Kerbin's atmosphere just stops. The game does have its limits.

Kerbin is orbited by two satellites: Mün at an orbital radius of 12,000 kilometers and Minmus with a 47,000-kilometer orbital radius. These are the only two celestial bodies the Kerbals have had a good look at due to a dense cloud cover obscuring telescopes (Note: you can get a good look at all the planets in the game, but for the purpose of storytelling, I'll leave you in suspense).



While the Mün orbits in line with Kerbin's equator, Minmus has a six-degree inclination.



Mün's equatorial radius is 200 kilometers, and it is pockmarked with craters.



Minmus, mostly made up of ice, has a radius of 60 kilometers and a distinct minty tint. Its surface gravity is just 0.05G, compared to Mün's 0.166G.



The center of the system is the star Kerbol, with a 262,600-kilometer radius. The inner system starts with Moho, which scientists believe is an atmosphere-less hunk of rock roughly the size of Mün that orbits on an eccentric path ranging from about 4.2 million kilometers to 6.3 million kilometers. Next up is Eve, a planet with a purple tint indicating a thick atmosphere at about 9.8 million kilometers. Orbiting Eve is a tiny speck known as Gilly. Kerbal is the third planet from its star at 13.6 million kilometers, and the inner system finishes with Duna, a red-tinted planet orbiting about 21 million kilometers with a moon known as Ike.



The outer system consists of two rocky specks and a gas giant. Dres is believed to be a Mün-sized rock orbiting from 41 million to 48-million km. Jool is the gas giant with a green tint at about 70 million km, and Eeloo is another mün-sized stone with a highly eccentric orbit. It shoots all the way out to 113 million km from Kerbol, but drops back to 66 million, inside of Jool's orbit, at its periapsis (lowest point of an orbit). This phenomenon makes scientists believe it used to be a Jool satellite that was kicked out due to gravitational encounters with its other moons. Jool has three moons, the second-largest of which (Laythe) is believed to have an atmosphere.



A quick game note: for realism purposes, I have disabled all the little cheating mechanisms that are activated by default. The game has a "Revert" option where if you do something stupid like forget to put parachutes on your re-entry vehicle, you can revert back to the VAB and restart the mission. This has been disabled. The game allows you to save the game at a certain point and later revert back to that save. This has been disabled. And perhaps most importantly, the game allows kerbals killed in action to respawn so you can still play with ones you get attached to. This has been disabled. Any kerbals that die will stay that way, so y'all may not want to get attached to these guys the way I usually do.



The most recent release (this is still a beta game) introduced contracts, money and reputation, to go along with science points needed to unlock parts along a tech tree. To start things out we'll accept the first four mission contracts, which we'll work on fulfilling in the first two missions. Contracts come in several forms: some are to test parts in certain conditions, there are contracts to leave satellites in certain orbits, and there are contracts to explore planets and such.



I have decided to name the near-Kerbin exploration program the Ukko Program, after the Finnish god of the sky and thunder. I'll probably jump aroud to different mythologies for program and ship names based on what deity happens to catch my eye that particular day.
The Ukko 1 is ready for its maiden voyage. The mission objective for the Ukko 1 is to test the concept of rocket flight and do some atmospheric testing.



Now, the smart, conservative thing to do would be to send up an unmanned vessel to test the concept of rocket flight, but that's just not the Kerbal Way. These little frog-men don't have huge heads for nothing. The Kerbal Way is to dive in head first.

The rocket has a delta-V budget of 1,802 meters per second. Delta-V (∆V, or as I'll write it from here on, dV) literally means "change in velocity". If you are orbiting at 3,000 meters per second (m/s) and you need to slow your orbital speed to 2,400 m/s to re-enter, you need to expend 600 dV. If your rocket only has enough fuel to produce 400 dV, you're in trouble.

Ukko 1's thrust-to-weight ratio is 4.29 at launch, which is pretty high, so we won't need to throttle the thing up all the way.
Ukko 1 on the launch pad, with Jebediah ready for the maiden flight of the Geeb Space Program:



Here's what Jeb sees inside the capsule. Those information screens are made possible by a mod called RasterPropManager.



Even at less than half power, Ukko 1 takes off like a hummingbird. Look how freakin' happy Jeb is.



The flight is still going smooth as we break through the cloud layer.



As we get above the clouds at about 15 kilometers, we can see beyond the mountains behind KSP.



Nearing the high point of our flight at around 41 kilometers, we turn the rocket around so the engine and empty tanks will shield the capsule from the effects of the atmosphere. From ths height, we'll have negligible re-entry effects, but you can never be too cautious. As you can see over there, Jeb cares not a whit about caution.



As we fall through the atmosphere, we decouple the crew capsule from the spent rocket and deploy the chute. It will drag until we get below a kilometer, when It'll open up and gently lower us into the ocean. There's the Mün through a gap in the clouds.



With a soft splashdown at about 7 m/s, the first flight in the history of the GSP is a success. Using data from this mission, the space engineers get to work researching things like batteries and how to keep essential supplies (food, water, oxygen) in space for longer missions, along with better parachutes and a less overpowering engine for future orbital maneuvers.
We've fulfilled two of our contracts (launch a new craft and achieve a height of 5 kilometers) and have been rewarded for these successes with money and reputation. In our next mission, we will work on getting to space.


As a note on why I'm starting this series, I watch and read a few walk-throughs (known as "Let's Plays" in some parts of the internet, where someone plays a game for others' enjoyment), but I feel there are few games that lend themselves to good storytelling. Kerbal Space Program is one of those that offers extreme highs and lows as you follow your brave kerbals through the dangerous missions involved in exploring a solar system. I've felt the heartbreak of losing a kerbal I've become attached to as he runs out of fuel on a descent and becomes but a green smear on a desolate landscape. I've watched my little green buddies vaporize due to engineering oversights just a few meters above the launchpad. I've also felt the joy of placing a Kerbal flag on another planet and returning that little dude safely home to, I assume, become a legend among the kerbals and live the rest of his days inseminating the many willing female kerbals that flock to his side. It's a lot more fun than shooting at random strangers on the internet.

Another game with storytelling potential is Crusader Kings, where you play as the head of a medieval family. The frustration when your strong and brilliant heir is killed in battle, leaving the family in the hands of his idiot hunchback brother, is highly amusing. I may do a series on that game if this one is received well.

So, if you guys enjoy this, I'll do more. If I don't get much of a response, eh, I might do more anyway just for my own enjoyment.

Stay tuned for the flight of the Ukko 2, and in the future I'll take input on which contracts to take and things like that.